


Ain't No Rest for the Wicked

by citrinevaliance



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Hadas enjoys playing with color and light symbolism way too much, I am on a vengeful mission to make Susan into an actual human being instead of a caricature, I mean my writing style is very stylized in general but this is Especially Stylized, Mentions of Caspian/Susan, Very stylized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 23:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10775148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrinevaliance/pseuds/citrinevaliance
Summary: "The train is moving fast, too fast for Susan to see anything but a blur of greens as she looks out the window. Lucy shifts in her sleep next to her, and Susan waits as she settles, watching Lucy’s murmurings fade to a single word that sounds like ‘home’."Susan tries to get on with life as best she can. She has always been a practical girl.





	Ain't No Rest for the Wicked

  1. The train is moving fast, too fast for Susan to see anything but a blur of greens as she looks out the window. Lucy shifts in her sleep next to her, and Susan waits as she settles, watching Lucy’s murmurings fade to a single word that sounds like ‘home’. She bites her lip and turns back to the window.



When she looks again Edmund has fallen asleep, pressed up against Peter like a small angel with too-big eyes and eyelashes dark against pale skin. Peter is resting, one arm wrapped around Edmund, head pressed back against the leather seat built for someone much taller than he is.

Susan does not close her eyes. Instead she turns to the foreign mass of green outside the window. It is still a blur.

 

  1. There are no shrouds here.



She could get some, she supposes. She could make sure that the walnut and oak turn to crimson and emerald and daffodil silks. Melt the nails and fill the empty swaths with gold embroidery. (That is what she had promised to do, when all of them had gone off to war.)

But that was when there would have been three coffins, not seven. The rest would prefer to be buried. She knows that, at least, and ripping people away is not her business. Her siblings will go in the ground with her parents, and her parents will go in the ground near the Professor and Polly. She will not fight for Jill and Eustace, there are people that deserve them far more than she.

 

  1. Susan is on a stretcher.



She is on a stretcher and the sky stretches blue and clear above her and her side is mortally, mortally cold. Or warm. She thinks it may be warm. It is not as if she can check.

She is wrapped up now, in bandages and blankets. It has been hours since the blood began seeping out. Has it been days? Time is funny here.

Now it is warm, it is hot, it is burning. Flames lick around her and she remembers her father showing her the grave plot in the cemetery with the looming stones who were waiting for nightfall to awake. It is night now and there are no stones. There is only the burning and the knowing that something has been forgotten.

It is only later, after her side has turned to pink scar-tissue (the ones who call her fair have never seen her unclothed) that she realizes her pyre had no shroud. Perhaps, she thinks with a laugh, watching Peter race into the courtyard- perhaps that is why she cried out that she was alive.

 

  1. There is a blatant ‘fuck you’ in America.



It is in its boats and its planes and its cars. But there are, of course, no trains. Susan cannot decide if the ‘fuck you’ is from her or for her.

There is a ‘fuck you’ in the hair of the girl across the bar, so Susan fucks her long and hard until the girl relents and collapses onto the sheets. She sits back and smokes and watches the girl doze. They must make quite a pair, she thinks. Dark hair spread out against the crisp sheets with the late, soft, bright sun coming in from the window.

There is a ‘fuck you’ in the clothes that she finds. In the midnight blue in the silk dress she’s given by the rich man who’s decided she’s his favorite for the week. There is midnight in the cotton blouse she steals from a friend, reveling in its scent even when she is halfway across America. There is a decided ‘fuck you’ in finding the cottage where she stayed the first time turned into a boutique with pale walls and a gorgeous satin skirt. It is midnight, so she wears it.

She, at least, will have her funeral shroud.

 

  1. Susan doesn’t come to the funeral.



She walks in before it, of course. She has to check whether the proper arrangements are made, but when she sees all the coffins lined up in a prim little order- largest to smallest, with Peter in the middle- she bursts out laughing.

Her peals of laughter bounce off the high stone walls and echo over and over and over. She wonders whether the sounds stop once they reach the corpses’ brains, if the dead can hear her laughing.

They should. It’s not as if they have anything better to listen to. Susan, of course, finds that realization desperately funny.

The priest finds her on the floor giggling. He seems to be a reflection of the church around him. Stony, and cold, and high. If Susan did not know better she would have said he was a golem.

 

  1. The Pevensies’ graves are empty. Then they are not. No one stands around crying afterwards.



 

  1. It is on the train, when they have both stopped giggling at the memory of Ed’s expression at the loss of his torch, and the scenery is turning into a dark blur that Susan determines that she will find a different boy, one who doesn’t care that she was ever a queen.



His name is Ben.

Lucy disapproves of him, but Lucy disapproves of a host of other things, like cars, and girls with lipstick, and loud music. Lucy, Susan realizes late at night, is selfish.

Instead of Caspian she finds a boy with brown hair and a sweet smile and a way of walking that makes you think he’s going to trip over his own feet. He kisses her softly, like he’s afraid of the damage he could wreak with his teeth, and she appreciates it, thank you very much. She has no patience for kisses where teeth scrape together and lips are chewed with worry.

After three months, when he kisses her all she can picture is the French student called Amelie with hair so blond and bright that it might as well be white.

One night, when all the girls in their dorm have snuck out to a Christmas party and she and Amelie are suddenly left alone in the dining room she leans over to Amelie and runs her fingers through her hair. Amelie takes the hint.

Susan walks into church the next morning with heels clicking on the cold stone and a beautiful fur coat wrapped around her. Amelie tilts her head back at Susan when she sees her, and yawns lazily.

Susan cocks her head and half smirks-half smiles.

Amelie understands her perfectly.

If a passerby had opted to look at the two girls for that half-second they would have worried that wolves had gotten into His flock.

Lucy makes a funny passerby.

 

  1. Lucy is golden.



It is after Lucy’s last visit to Narnia (her _fourth_ , Susan thinks with something akin to pity and envy) that Susan realizes she has not changed.

She waits a month, then two, then six, before she realizes Lucy has not and will never lose the sharp glow about her.

When Lucy tells her about the voyage, about the dragon who was really Eustace, and the sun being too bright and hot and all right in the end because of the water, and then about that final ocean, or sea, or lake of white lilies, Susan stares and nods. She doesn’t smile.

The next mirror she finds, she stares at herself, eyes large and skin pale and hair dark, and she punches the mirror. Her hand bleeds for hours. The next day her pristine sheets have turned brown and dark red with the blood. She has survived worse.

 

  1. Peter comes to her in late autumn, voice deep and dark in the cold sun.



She runs. She knows he will follow; he will catch up. But she has always been a faster sprinter

Susan is in the cemetery with the looming stones. The leaves are scattered about the ground like fire. Dying, dying, dead.

She hears the gate swing open behind her. Susan does not turn.

“Sister,” Peter says, with the voice that once brought worlds to his knees and mountains crashing down.

She does not know why he has come. She can guess.

She turns, finally, and Peter’s eyes rest on hers.

“Peter,” she says, her pause acidic as the air that scrapes against the back of her throat.

His chest rises and falls evenly. He takes a step forward, and his hands rest on a gravestone, holding it tight.

Susan nearly smiles. It touches the corners of her mouth and dances there for a moment. But Peter does not see, and the twilight claims his face.

If he says goodbye, she cannot hear it.

**Author's Note:**

> All comments are craved. Like, you have no idea. I love them. (Especially constructive criticism and questions about why I did stuff. because, y'know. I like talking about writing.)


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